Telecommunication service providers operating 3rd Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) networks often use multiple nodes to manage Mobile Station International Subscriber Director Numbers (MSISDN)s (e.g., phone numbers), to manage user accounts assigned to the MSISDNs, and to generate billing reports for the user accounts based on phone calls associated with the MSISDNs. The nodes must perform multiple operations to accommodate different types of usage information originating from different service providers, for instance, via a Telephone Account Procedure (TAP).
For instance, a TAP Call Detail Record (CDR) originating from a region outside the United States may arrive at a node in the United States of the service provider managing MSISDNs months after the network usage represented by the TAP CDR occurred. For example, a user with an MSISDN assigned to a user account with a U.S. carrier may make a phone call while traveling abroad. The phone call may be facilitated by a network of a non-U.S. carrier operating in the country of the phone call. As noted above, the process for generating the TAP CDR for the phone call and delivering it to U.S. carrier responsible for billing the MSISDN associated with the phone call may take months.
The user may cancel a phone plan or subscription associated with the user account of the service provider (e.g., the U.S. carrier). However, because of the possibility of receiving delayed CDRs after canceling the user account, the service provider node(s) typically stores the MSISDN with the association to the user account for an additional period of, for instance, 60-90 days after receiving the cancellation request. During this additional period, the MSISDN is unavailable to be reassigned to a different user account. Furthermore, in instances where the MSISDN is associated with a post-paid plan, the node(s) must store charging information associated with the post-paid plan as well.